Enviro Groups Back Down on Challenging DEP Permits for ME2 Pipe

An interesting development on Friday, when the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued a press release to announced that three radical environmental groups have dropped their objections to permits the DEP previously granted for the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. Clean Air Council, Mountain Watershed Association, and THE Delaware Riverkeeper “settled” their appeal of 20 permits issued to Sunoco for the ME2 project. What does it mean that they “settled?” According to the announcement, “The settlement does not alter any of the 20 permits in the appeal.” In other words, this is face-saving by the radical groups. They backed down. Gave up. Threw in the towel–recognizing that ME2 is about to be completed. In other words, they’ve lost. And we won! We love saying that. No matter how hard the radicals tried to spin the news (via their affiliated mouthpieces, like StateImpact Pennsylvania), you simply can’t gloss over the fact that they’ve backed down…